Cloth Measuring and Cutting Device. (open access)

Cloth Measuring and Cutting Device.

Patent for a new and improved cloth measuring device.
Date: April 5, 1898
Creator: Hood, William B.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Convertible Mop and Brush. (open access)

Convertible Mop and Brush.

Patent for improvements in convertible mops and brushes by using a “combination of the fountain-handle, the bail/frame secured thereto and provided with a rubber strip at its lower edge, and the mop secured to the bail/frame.” (Lines 3-7, p.2) Illustration is included.
Date: April 7, 1891
Creator: Bagby, William H.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Cooling and Preserving Apparatus. (open access)

Cooling and Preserving Apparatus.

Patent for a "cooling apparatus in which a cloth envelops a vertically-disposed series of supports, and has its upper end dipping into a receptacle supplied with water; and the object of the improvement is to secure a uniformity of temperature throughout the structure, and particularly in the several compartments formed between the various supports, as well as to prevent the spoiling of food by foreign matters entering the same by accidental dislodgment from a support immediately thereover." (Lines 8-19) Includes instructions and illustrations.
Date: April 30, 1895
Creator: Brown, Elijah Clark
System: The Portal to Texas History
Combined Couch and Storage-Chest. (open access)

Combined Couch and Storage-Chest.

Patent for a couch that stores clothes in its body and head. The clothes can be readily accessed.
Date: April 30, 1895
Creator: Caruthers, Robert A. & Savage, Charles P.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Stump-Puller. (open access)

Stump-Puller.

Patent for a stump-puller that "can be quickly assembled and taken apart, to devise a device which will admit of the rope being quickly paid off from the capstan after the stump has been uprooted, and, finally, to provide a machine which can be easily handled and which will perform the required work in a rapid and satisfactory manner and which can be transported from one stump to the other by being dragged upon the ground" (lines 10-19).
Date: April 7, 1896
Creator: Widmer, Louis J.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Rotary Engine. (open access)

Rotary Engine.

Patent for an improved, simple, and effective rotary engine that economically uses steam and automatically controls steam discharge. "Two distinct rotary motions in reverse directions are obtained at the same time" (lines 16-18) in this engine.
Date: April 11, 1893
Creator: Walker, James C.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Provision Safe. (open access)

Provision Safe.

Patent for a new and improved safe. This design "has for its objects, among others, to provide a simple, cheap, and economical safe, in which provisions may be kept cool during the hot season and from freezing during the winter weather. I provide a suitable post or support, from which extend brackets, shelves, or hooks or other provisions for the support of the various articles to be contained therein. [T]he whole [is covered] with a cloth and [has] a water tank or receptacle at the upper end and . . . ha[s] a stream of water flow[ing] or trickl[ing] down upon the cloth to saturate the same" (lines 14-25).
Date: April 26, 1892
Creator: Schrib, Juni
System: The Portal to Texas History
Perforating Mechanism for Cylinder Printing-Presses. (open access)

Perforating Mechanism for Cylinder Printing-Presses.

Patent for a perforating mechanism for cylinder printing-presses that is simple and automatic. It produces "lines of perforations at any required distance apart and of any desired length in paper or cardboard at the time of printing thereon the forms for checks, draft, bills, notes, tickets or other printed or lithographed matter" (lines 12-17).
Date: April 17, 1894
Creator: Kellner, Eugene
System: The Portal to Texas History